Page 28 - BCALA Winter 2018

28 | BCALA NEWS | Volume 45, Issue 1
The Tragic Fall of Mike Hanlon:
One of American Fiction’s Only
Black Male Librarians is
Re-Imagined...As a Drug Addict
By Jason Alston, Coastal Carolina University
(Author’s note: I typically do not read fiction, and I have not read the novel “IT” by Stephen King. Therefore, any descriptions of the novel itself are derived from online summaries of the novel and admittedly may miss key details. I have watched the 1990 made-for-television miniseries of “IT”, as well as the 2017 film “IT”, which is the first of a two-part film adaptation of the novel.)
When I was hired to my first professional librarian job in 2008 at the age of 25, I was told at the time that I was quite possibly one of the ten youngest practicing Black male librarians in the United States who had an ALA-accredited masters degree in library science. Then again, at the time there were believed to only be about 600 practicing Black male librarians total in the country; Black men therefore made up about 0.5 percent of the professional American librarian workforce.
My hope is that when the next round of “Diversity Counts” figures are released by the American Library Association, those figures will reveal that the number of Black male librarians in this country will have increased significantly since last decade. But in the meantime, I have tried to do my part by recruiting Black
men into this field through formal and informal methods, including speaking to Black male students
who are preparing to graduate from college about careers in librarianship, and introducing my Phi Beta Sigma fraternity brothers – young and old – to potential careers in my field.
Though I’d never wish to be overly- reliant on fictional depictions of librarianship to sell Black men on
the idea of becoming librarians, I do believe that seeing images – real life or fictional – of relatable Black men working as librarians may deconstruct some barriers that prevent Black
men from viewing librarianship
as a viable and respectable career choice. However, because Black male librarians are so hard to find in real life, fictional depictions of cool Black male librarians doing positive things would be very welcome by myself and
likely by others in my field.
That’s why I was so excited about part two of the movie adaptation of Stephen King’s “IT” hitting theaters in 2019. Fans of the novel and/or the 1990 made-for-television miniseries know that Mike Hanlon, one of Derry, Maine’s few Black residents and the only Black member of “The Losers’ Club” (the group of children who serve as protagonists in the story), grows up to become the town librarian and uses his knowledge and skills as a librarian to contribute to the battle between The Losers’ Club as adults and “IT/Pennywise”, the shapeshifting, malevolent entity that terrorizes and feeds upon the people of Derry roughly every 27 years. Mike happens to be the only fictional Black male librarian I am aware of, and
I was very excited to see some new Black male librarian badass supply